XOR Dreams: A Lovecraftian Cyberpunk Final Part

It was the following morning me and my friend woke up in the hospital.
He spent the entire morning watching television mindlessly, while trying
to think of what happened in those tunnels in the darkness. I was left
craving going back down to find out what the meaning of the symbols were,
and the meaning of that statue. Since I wasn't injured, I left my friend
to the care of Ravina as I made my way toward the tunnels, leaving my futon
at the hospital. She said she would roll it up, and I could sleep at her
place tonight.
As much as you get used to wandering the darkness, there isn't anything
like wandering it alone. I walked through the tunnels, slashing and
thrusting giant rodents, and eventually came upon the room in which we
had left. Already, the room had been cleaned up the mess, despite having
no natural reason for the corpses absence, and stared at the portal in
which the monstrocities had exited. I touched my hands along the wall,
and found the room began to swirl around.
I arrived in what seemed like a laboratory in hell, with various
abominations, craving to eat my flesh. And thus, I made sure to only
stay inside of the lab. I heard a voice in the darkness. It was a young
woman in her early twenties, who said that I should not have arrived
here, that it was a top secret government facility. She asked how I
had found the place, and I noted that me and my friends had been living
in the tunnels for some time, and that it was only recently that a
friend of mine had been kind enough to let us stay with her. But the
lady other than this question, remained largely elusive about what
was beyond the tunnels.

I was knocked out, and woke up at Ravina's place.
-- And just where have you been? She asks.
-- Where am I?
-- At my place, you always sleep here. -- She adhusted the blankets
for me, while I situated on the futon. -- I found you outside in
the cold at midnight. Don't leave me like that again, and your friend,
he needs you.
I had nothing else to say then.
I was left thinking of the tunnels.

It was one of those years in high school, when kids felt like proving their
worth by picking fights with me. You know those kinds of hot shots, who feel
like fighting is the only answer to an infinite possibility of questions one
may ask. At times I dream of the day I can put such hot shots in their place,
and slit their juggular veins, and yet at the end of the day I realize I
prefer the freedom to eat Broccolli beef at the local Chinese restaurant
downtown. And the thrill of the exploit on the net made whatever issue
I had in my past largely worth it. Although at times I think, what if I came
back to high school at my current age. Certain television shows made jokes
about adults beating up minors, but seniors in high school were not minors
in any no legal real life sense. And for my own size, I'm effectively no
bigger than I was in high school.
These days I carry a can of pepper spray with me, in the off chance that
something would attack me in these tunnels, but so far I haven't had to
use it. And to be honest, running, when you're not having to proof your
machisimo to blustery men, was a perfectly valid strategy to survive the
next day. In these tunnels I could find place I could hide from the giant
rodents, an opprotunity to take a break and browse the net. The internet
had become almost ubiquitous sense last you, with pirate boxes on almost
every street corner. Even downhere, you'll find USB dead drops every so
often.
In such dead drops, it acted as an offline social network, so I would
ocassionally find people posting images on there, from who knows where.
But do to the time delays between interactions, I could have time to
finish my thoughts. An aspect of my life in previous years that had
always been scarce, even among family, who had the urge to find some
reason to snark before I've finished my thought. Even when writing
at the dinner table, my family would find some reason to interrypt my
flow. So I spent most times downstairs writing various stories non
interrupted. But my own life never even approached some of my science
fiction stories.
At least until recently.

Once I had gotten back from the tunnels, I took a break and rested
at Ravina's place, parking my tiny house in a public parking lot
for the following night, having dropped a week's worth of organic
farming salary for the privaledge. I had the tendency to keep that
kind of money on hand, as I had long sense lost any amount of trust
in the bank. The banks, not only were they demanding money for account
upkeep, but also double the price to get the job done, so I have
heard. Therefore I resolved that the best course of action was to
keep all my assets in person. I kept several wallets to store my
cash, and thankfully that enabled to the lifestyle to not have to find
a trailer park, that was becoming increasingly rare as urbanization
increased. I slept on my futon, wondering how my other homeless friend
that survived the onslaught of the underground tunnels. When I was
down there, the lady scientist suggested that I leave that dimension
for that time being. That I would be contacted soon.
On the following evening, when I was getting ready for the beach,
the lady had called me on the phone. She said that she didn't
want me immediatly in that alternate universe lab at that moment,
as she didn't want to reveal to her superiors that was there doing
unofficial work. She had known about my tendency toward puzzle
solving, although this wasn't necessarily revolving around programming,
so much as html and remote viewing. I had more experience with remote
viewing rather than html, but had acquired the language skill in
order to communicate my concepts about IPvRV, or Internet Protocol
Over Remote Viewing. You used all of your five senses, plus the
extra sense of magnetism in order to look for hidden things with the
urban matrix.
And now, she wanted me to use these skills to find hidden alien bases
in the portal that led to the lab.

In my younger years, I dreamed of a woman guillotined for murder. I woke up with
mother saying "wake up little Hitler." By the next night I hallucinated of beheaded
hippies, bleeding in a field of flowers growing in my bedroom, and outside was my
grandmother's room ready for me to play in. But I used that time to be alone from
the world, hiding away from the light. And now here I lay, waiting for some chance
at life.
I took random coordinate numbers, gathered my pseudonym and date, then reclined
resisting the temptation to masturbate. I could a hidden landscape that my vision
could not see, a world only my third eye could sense, and sensed only of extreme
wetness. The smellyness of iron oxide wafted under my nose, as I resisted the
draw of the morning sunlight. I was called by the lady of the lab, who asked
me what I had sensed.
I couldn't describe how I felt.
It was only sadness.
I dreamed of gipsy girls and petite tap dancers, some hung by nooses in the
seventeenth century.
I suppose one can never change.